The electrical properties of biologic tissue has been of scientific interest for a substantial period time. Many developments and new devices based on a knowledge of bioelectricity have been used in biology and the biomedical area in the last century.
Bioelectrical impedance analysis is one of the interesting and challenging subjects in this area. Bioimpedance has been studied in many areas of medicine because of its potential ability to measure body composition with noninvasive, simple, inexpensive, and portable methods. In particular, bioimpedance has been employed in clinical research for many years. For example, clinical applications using bioimpedance were reported at an early stage by Nyboer [3] and Patterson [4].
Many authors have investigated the nature of the electrical properties of living tissue [2, 4, 5]. Schwan et al. described the relationship between the dielectric properties of the cell membrane using multi-frequency currents [2]. A basic theory to explain electrical properties of tissue in the body has been well established by Cole [1]. In particular, Cole successfully developed an equivalent circuit model (hereinafter the “Cole-Cole model”) to explain the electrical response of cells and their membranes to AC current.
A method of using bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) has been suggested to measure extracellular (ECV) and intracellular (ICV) fluid volumes based on the Cole-Cole model and the Hanai method [5, 6, 10]. The methodology of multi-frequency bioimpedance analysis can now provide some information about extracellular and intracellular fluid volume in the total or segmental body compartment [6].
However, the accuracy of bioimpedance analysis, including BIS, is a major point of concern by the clinical user [7, 8]. Even though many studies have reported the use of bioimpedance analysis to estimate body fluids, the current techniques have not been accepted widely in clinical practice because of questions regarding reliability, validity, and accuracy.
There are many factors which adversely affect the accuracy of the measurement and analysis using currently available bioimpedance techniques. In accordance with certain of its aspects, the present invention is concerned with one of those factors, namely, the model used to analyze bioimpedance data. The bioimpedance model commonly used to date to calculate electrical properties of different tissues has a basic assumption that fat has a high resistivity compared to fat free mass, and that therefore, fat mass can be ignored. However, a recent study found that bioimpedance measurements at 50 kilohertz are affected when subjects have large amounts of adipose tissue [7]. As discussed in detail below, in accordance with the present invention it has been found that the amount of fat mass is one of the major factors affecting the accurate measurement of body composition by BIS for subjects having a variety of body mass index (BMI) values.